CONTRIBUTING.md

Contributing to Neovim

If you need additional support see the wiki.

Getting started contributing

• Look for the entry-level Issue Label. It marks easier issues.
• Take a look at Waffle. It'll show who is working on what isssues.

What not to do

Please avoid broad cosmetic/style changes which increase merge conflicts and add excessive noise to git blame.

Issues

• Search existing issues before raising a new one.
• Include as much detail as possible. In particular, we need to know which OS you're using.

Pull requests

For all PRs

• Make it clear in the issue tracker what you are working on.
• Be descriptive in your PR message: what is it for, why is it needed, etc.
• Don't make cosmetic changes to unrelated files in the same PR.

Tagging in the issue tracker

When submitting pull requests, include one of the following 'tags' in the title:

• [WIP] - Work In Progress. The pull request will change, and there is no need to review it yet.
• [RFC] - Request For Comment. The request needs reviewing and/or comments.
• [RDY] - The request is ready to be merged. The request must have been reviewed by at least one person and have no outstanding issues.
• Default label is assumed to be [WIP] as long as there's no indication otherwise.

Branching & history

• Use a feature branch, not master.
• Rebase your feature branch onto (upstream) master before raising the PR.
• Keep up to date with changes in (upstream) master so your PR is easy to merge.
• Try to actively tidy your history: combine related commits with interactive rebasing etc. If your PR is still [WIP] don't be afraid to force-push to your feature branch to tidy your history.

For code PRs

Testing

• We are unlikely to merge your PR if the Travis build fails.
• The Travis build does not currently run the tests under valgrind, but we would strongly encourage you to do so locally.

Coding style

All code changes should follow the Neovim style guide.

Please run clint.py to detect style errors. It is not perfect and may have false positives and negatives. To have clint.py ignore certain special cases, put // NOLINT at the end of the line.

Commit messages

Follow the Tim Pope Convention (@tpope) for commit messages. Most importantly, do the following:

• Keep the first line a summary of 50 characters or less.
• Write the summary in the imperative mood.
• Write a more detailed explanation (after a blank line) that explains more in depth (only if necessary).

Take a look at @elmart's commits on Neovim for examples.